Students nervously return to school after shooting

Volunteer parents welcome school children arriving at the Theodore Roosevelt School in Burbank, Calif., early Monday, Dec. 17, 2012. Teachers, parents and students are making an anxious return to school this week after a gunman stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, shooting to death 26 people before killing himself. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Tom Fico holds his son Lucas, 5, center, as he says good-bye to his older brother Jake, left, at the Theodore Roosevelt School in Burbank, Calif., early Monday, Dec. 17, 2012. Teachers, parents and students are making an anxious return to school this week after a gunman stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, shooting to death 26 people before killing himself. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Balloons fly from a memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012, in the Sandy Hook village of Newtown, Conn. A gunman walked into the school Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Manuel Moreno, right, walks his daughter Jady, 6, to the Morris Street elementary school, Monday,Dec. 17, 2012 in Danbury, Conn. Teachers and parents across the country were wrestling with how best to quell children's fears about returning to school for the first time since the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Candles, balloons, stuffed animals and personal notes are placed on a memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012, in the Sandy Hook village of Newtown, Conn. A gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Friday and opened fire, killing 26 people, including 20 children. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Rudy McCarley, left, walks his daughter Zarina to the Morris Street Elementary School, Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 in Danbury, Conn. Teachers and parents across the country were wrestling with how best to quell children's fears about returning to school for the first time since the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

A man clutches two sobbing women at the site of a makeshift memorial for school shooting victims at the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Conn., Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012. A gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the town, killing 26 people, including 20 children before killing himself on Friday. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

A Connecticut State Police tactical team searches a train station near an elementary school, which was in a lockdown, in Ridgefield, Conn., Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, after a suspicious person was seen near the station. On Friday, authorities say a gunman killed his mother at their home and then opened fire inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, killing 26 people, including 20 children, before taking his own life. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

A man reacts at the site of a makeshift memorial for school shooting victims in Newtown, Conn., Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012. A gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the town, killing 26 people, including 20 children before killing himself on Friday. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Police officers walk up to an elementary school, which was in a lockdown, in Ridgefield, Conn., Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, after a suspicious person was seen near the train station close to the school. On Friday, authorities say a gunman killed his mother at their home and then opened fire inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, killing 26 people, including 20 children, before taking his own life. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

NEWTOWN, Conn. – This shattered town prepared on Monday to begin burying the dead from one of the country’s worst mass shootings as the nation fought to overcome days of anguish.

Christmas decorations have given way to impromptu roadside memorials leading in and out of this western Connecticut town. One such commemoration featured 26 tiny U.S. flags with a candle in front of each, symbolizing those killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday morning when a gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, forced his way into the building and began firing.

The town prepared to bury the first of the 20 first-graders who were shot many times, some at close range. They were Jack Pinto, 6, a New York Giants football fan, and Noah Pozner, also 6, who liked to tinker.

“He was just a really lively, smart kid,” Noah’s uncle Alexis Haller, of Woodinville, Wash, told reporters. “He would have become a great man, I think. He would have grown up to be a great dad.”

Investigators in Newtown continued their efforts to understand the Friday morning rampage that began when Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, 52, in their home, state police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance told reporters at the televised morning briefing.

“We are working 24 hours a day and will continue to do so indefinitely to answer questions about how and why this occurred,” state police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance told reporters at the televised morning briefing. “There are many witnesses that we need to interview.”

Among those witnesses are two injured survivors of the attack, he said. Child witnesses may also be interviewed.

Police will also seek to answer, if possible, Lanza’s motive. Officials were also examining damaged computer gear seeking clues.

“We will go back to the date of birth and answer every single question,” Vance said.

Vance also pledged that police will investigate any other threats, including the fake bomb scare phoned in to authorities on Sunday.

Schools remained closed in Newtown, even as other students returned to classes in Connecticut. Sandy Hook Elementary will likely be closed for months, Vance said. Students at Sandy Hook are expected to go to a school in a nearby town for the foreseeable future.

The Lanza home will also be the site of extended investigations, Vance said.

The parking lot at Saint Rose of Lima Catholic Church in the center of town was nearly full during morning Mass. In the sanctuary, which is usually dotted with a few dedicated worshipers on a Monday morning, more than 100 people prayed in the pews.

The congregation lost eight children in the shooting on Friday.

It was the week before Christmas, so three of the four Advent candles were lighted at the front of the church, in anticipation of the holiday. An additional 26 white candles were lighted on the front of the altar for the Mass, one for each of those from the school who died on Friday.

Father Luke Suarez, a new priest who was recently ordained, led the service on Monday morning. Other members of the church’s clergy were occupied with counseling families and helping make arrangements for three funerals scheduled to be held at the large brick church this week.

Brian Wallace, spokesman for the diocese of Bridgeport, Conn. which oversees 83 parishes, including Saint Rose of Lima, said that the Saint Rose church will be arranging eight funerals in the coming weeks.

A week before Christmas, one of the busiest times of the year, funeral services are planned at the church for Jessica Rekos on Tuesday, Daniel Gerard Barden on Wednesday and Catherine Violet Hubbard on Thursday.

“We’ll get by, the people will get by,” said Wallace.

— Los Angeles Times

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Lilly Rosell contemplated keeping her 7-year-old daughter at home on the first day of classes since the Connecticut elementary school massacre, but she ultimately decided, like so many other parents, there was only so much she could do to keep her daughter safe.

“I’m panicking here to be honest,” Rosell, of Miami, said as she anxiously surveyed her daughter’s campus. “It’s now about being in the prayer closet a little more often.”

Most of the nation fell back into the familiar, if newly raw, routine of dropping off children at school, all too aware that a mass shooting can happen anywhere, at any time.

Schools across the U.S. beefed up patrols and security plans were reviewed as teachers and students returned to class after a gunman stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, killing 26 people and then himself. A handful of schools were locked down throughout the day as extra vigilant administrators and police responded to any report of suspicious activity.

At least three schools were on alert in Ohio after threatening comments were made on Facebook and Twitter. In Ridgefield, Conn., swarms of parents picked up their children and police were at each school after a report of a suspicious person at a nearby train station. In Philadelphia, officers rushed to a high school after security officers mistook a student’s umbrella for a gun. And in Tampa, Fla., the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office questioned students after a bullet was found on a school bus.

Some parents kept their kids at home. Camille Lacroix-Moulton said her two children both woke up feeling a bit under the weather, so she decided it was best for them to stay home. Her daughter is in kindergarten; her son is in fifth grade.

“Mainly because of my little one. She just turned six, and I don’t want her to hear about it,” the Milford, N.H., mother said. “It wasn’t really me thinking, ‘Today’s the day that something bad’s gonna happen to her. It was more like, a lot of this stuff is going on today. I’m sure a lot of kids know about it, even at her age. So I was more than happy to wait a day and let it die down.”

Chicago resident Melissa Tucker said she only sent her children to school after assurances from administrators that extra safety precautions were made.

“I was actually going to keep them home today,” she said.

One school district in western Pennsylvania went so far as to get a court order over the weekend so it could arm officers in each of its schools Monday. The board had recently voted to let officers have guns but decided to expedite the process. The court order affected the Butler Area School District and the South Butler County School District, both about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Schools held a moment of silence and flew flags at half-staff. Meanwhile, teachers and administrators tried to handle the psychological toll of the shooting, many of them opting for routine rather than a discussion about the shooting.

At the Global Concepts Charter School in Lackawanna, N.Y., near Buffalo, Principal David Ehrle fielded calls from parents who told him they had shielded their children from news coverage over the weekend. The parents wanted to know whether the kids would hear about it from their teachers. He told them they would not.

“Certainly, you can’t stop kids from talking on the bus or at the lunch table, but as a school we’re not, if you will, sponsoring educating about it,” he said.

Ehrle said teachers at the kindergarten through eighth-grade school were told to assure kids who asked that the school was safe and send any apprehensive students to a counselor if necessary.

“Often, normalcy is the most comforting thing for the students,” he said. “That was the message that we sent out over the weekend to the staff is, that we need to continue on doing what we’ve always done.”

Eight-year-old Ally Tobey said she had a completely normal day of third-grade in Concord, N.H. Asked if any of her friends or teachers mentioned Connecticut, she said simply, “nope.”

American history teacher Richard Cantlupe said he would remind his students his No. 1 job was to keep them out of harm’s way and that, “Just like the teachers at Newtown, I would do whatever I had to do to keep them safe.”

Rosell said she didn’t tell her daughter any details about the shooting, but did try to prepare her in case there was ever a dangerous situation in the future. She advised her daughter to dive onto the floor if she ever saw someone with a gun or people screaming.

“You mean like hide under my desk?” she said her daughter asked.

No, Rosell told her, explaining she should pretend to be lifeless on the floor instead and not move until she comes to get her. Her daughter looked at her confused.